Clip art and photos

  WPClipart is a collection of high-quality public domain images specifically tailored for use in word processors and optimized for printing on home/small office inkjet printers. There are thousands of color graphic clips as well as illustrations, photographs and black and white line art. All are available in lossless, PNG format. The wpclipart server is also able to convert any image (up to 600 pixels in width or height) to a JPG, if that image format is desired. As of Monday, 01/05/2009 there are 24,450 images.



Clip of the Day

"First True Scientist" al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (image edited from a 1982 Iraqi 10 dinar note, Public Domain, see: Wikipedia entry). Contrary to popular history, 700 years before Newton this Iraqi scientist was using what is now considered the "scientific method." There is an article by Professor Jim Al-Khalili, University of Surrey, available at: BBC News.

 WPClipart is a fast, clean and safe site for children and others to find good-quality, printable images that have no copyright restrictions. All the images are in the Public Domain. Ads on pages are minimal to make the site as fast as possible.

While there are literally thousands of "fun" images -- I take great pains to find, edit and retouch images of historical and/or general educational value. (Legal and Sources page) Browse though American History, flags, geography (maps) and other sections to see what I mean...

While I realize folks trying to be courteous will generally want to ask first, I get several requests a day and responding to each becomes time consuming. I would feel badly if I were to ignore someone's email... so please, feel free to use the images with my unwritten blessing : ) The only REQUEST I make is that you do not use large numbers of the images in another ONLINE gallery or application -- therefore competing with wpclipart in image searches. If you have any questions you are welcome to email me. But please take a peek at the "legal" and/or the "legal FAQ" pages first... one of them may have the answer to your question.

Whether you Download the Windows installer version or the simple compressed package of wpclipart, it is easy to integrate all the images into OpenOffice. Do this as so:

1. Start OpenOffice.org
2. Click Tools->Options
3. Click ->paths
4. Click Graphics
5. Click Edit
6. Select the path to WPClipart files
7. OK

When you go to "Insert > Picture", WPClipart directory will show up. Be sure to check the bottom button for PREVIEW, which makes browsing for the images much easier. (I actually find the wpclipart viewer/editor easier to use, but many folks use just the clipart...)

Browse the collection or do a site-specific image search.

There are 48 top-level folders, and they contain thumbnail images and subfolders. An example is animals/aquatic/shark, where you would find (at the date of this writing) 27 images of sharks.

The site search feature appears on every page and searches only within WPClipart. The search is fast and thorough yet does not yield any outside results that may have led to untoward images or pages with a dozen ads per page or links to links to links . . .

You can also add WPClipart search as a search provider
(Will appear as a choice in upper-right corner of your menu bar in Firefox and IE7+)
Install the WPClipart Search Plugin

Transparent images are not used by default bcause this can cause printing problems with some word processors (AbiWord in particular.) I have, due to request, been updateing and making transparent PNG versions of the images available. If there is a transparent version or an image, there is now a link to this directly under the displayed thumbnail.

JPG versions of any image (up to certain dimensions) are also available from a link below the image thumbnails. These JPG versions on generated on-the-fly on the wpclipart server -- so each may take a few moments to process before the JPG is displayed.

There are loads of "fun" images at WPClipart, but a big part of what is being attempted here has to do with historical/research value. Maps, geography, flags, historical figures, American History, rocks and minerals, religion, mythology -- these are not popular or fashionable image groups, but they can be quite useful in documentation, school papers and, ultimately, to enable people to get a more visceral feel for who and what the images represent.

Toward this end I have done a lot of retouching of images, at times taking some "artistic license" by manipulating the originals. I can attest that in the case of historical photos, this is never done with an eye to change any impression put forward by the original -- editing is done first and foremost to ensure that if a visitor needs to reprint the image, usually scaled down and on a modest inkjet printer, then the details of the image will still be visible.

For a few examples of historical figures see the retouched examples page

Despite the serious advantage of using the online search function, there are times when internet access is not available. With that in mind, the entire collection can be downloaded as a package or in parts. This package includes the useful (but not necessary) viewer/editor. See the download page for either the Windows installer or the bz2-compressed versions of the collection.

The downloads also come with a viewer/editor application I programmed in pyGTK. It is not needed to use the graphics, but it serves 3 very useful purposes:

1. Browse the collection with nice size thumbnails


2. Quick and simple edits to rotate, filter or adjust color/brightness of images


3. COPY TO CLIPBOARD function, which means that if you have a document open in Word, OpenOffice, AbiWord or others - you just PASTE and you have the image in your document. No need to navigate through menus to insert a picture and then have to search through your machine.
   With wpclipper just copy to clipboard, and back in your document paste. Sweet.

For terms of use, changelogs and some background information about this site and the images, see the about page. Individual images are PD -- the site and collection are copyright of Paul Sherman.

WPClipart collection: clipart and photos optimized for use with word processors and inkjet printers. Images are Public Domain and may be used for commercial as well as personal projects without attribution or linking. See the Legal page for more information and a list of sources. All images have been edited with the GIMP on Absolute Linux. Additional resources for the GIMP including brushes, scripts and tutorials are available on gimphelp.org.